Bucic

Left vertical panel. Right vertical panel.

It's gotten awfully quiet around DCS in general but man some of the questions sure are pointless.

I have never given it a thought before. Does anyone have any information on that subject? Pilot accounts maybe? Operational procedures?

It might be a waste of time if you have other references. I don't. Left and right lower front panels are needed at minimum.

This one. It's the Lowes POV with the least distortion I could find. https://forum.dcs.world/topic/318106-f-5e-simpit-cockpit-dimensions-and-flight-controls/?do=findComment&comment=5376951

The photo by Yen I posted above is the single best real reference I have. Have you got anything else?

Another one to the bunch

bloom.fx - KILL THE BLOOM MOD - Copy Based on the DCS Shaders - SIMPLEX 2.8X v1.0 - by LucShep - thank you @LucShep!

BEFORE AFTER

http://oplaunch.com/resources/aerial-attack-study-1964.pdf This resource has a section on the 'B.

So a crappy PLA should do Transparent or "no color."

In real aicraft a white paint is used thin enough that the light can shine through?

https://blog.frost.kiwi/GLSL-noise-and-radial-gradient/ Debanding section. I might be one of those guilty confusing Reshade with SweetFX... I'm going to try it one day for sure but the problem is there for ED to deal with. In what essentially is a sky game

Why is it two directional then?

Sooner or later you're going to face the problem of insufficient number of pins and shift registers as the solution. Please ping me if you start incorporating any. It may be you're ahead of me with your project and I'd appreciate some pointers as well.

Found the posts about the Belsimtek's 3D model discrepancies. @rubylight is the man.

There was a guy who reported it years ago. Imported the model to Blender and did some chcecks. Does anyone have a link? I don't mind the in-game model being artist's impression. But I'm waiting for the real weapons panel to arrive by mail and as you can imagine it is going to make things difficult. Especially that I have already cut the plates. From a 2 mm thick steel. At my home (no dedicated workshop)! I left the tabs for bending to 90 degrees. If they are enough to sacrifice to save the plates, I'll do just that. If not... I don't know. I'll probably buy additional plates The thing is I'm only making the weapons and fuel system panels. If required, I'm going to freaking do my own artist impression. I spoke with a mil demo pilot with lots of international contacts recently. No '5-related contacts sadly. There are methods of projecting free hand photos onto 3 main projection planes. Including a manual method! But I'm not up for it. At all.

I didn't say I won't try it

I think in essence we are asking similar questions. rrr

Photo of the real thing: No, not really. Based on the grid in the photo I have corrected for 99% of lens and direction distortions. ModelViewer: In case if the ModelViewer reference I used the ORTHOGRAPHIC mode so no perspective distortion. Foreshortening is still a thing but I made sure the camera is 90 degrees to the plane of the panels withing +/- 3 degrees. Something is seriously out of whack here. I'm pausing the work on the panels until I figure it out. I might well go with the Model Viewer references to at least have the completeness and consistency. Hornet guys have it too easy!

Is there a "do not @#%g touch a bit of image unless explicitly slidered to do so for a specific effect" preset in ReShade? To me ReShade is "the spinners of gaming" and I can't say I'm really open to change my mind

On the other hand I haven't found a single real F-5E with the top-right corner of the panel shaped like the referemce panel. All my F-5E reference photos have the panel shaped like the one below.

Obviously I didn't mean the devs of the old games solved the problem completely and forgot to pick up their Nobel prizes in mathematics. I meant banding was not visible. In DCS it looks attrocious.

Wow, I didn't expect this! The panel proportions in the sim are completely off. The following reference is a photo of a real F-5E panel cover plate. Even after rescaling the reference to the sim panel. I'm not after full fidelity but without even proportions right in the sim 3D model I don't know what to do with it and how to proceed... The horizontal error is 152.25:163.73 In the real thing the 152.25 is 6" and the distance the 6 weapon stations toggle switches are distributed across (1" spacing exactly).